A little boy is sitting in the classroom, looking out of the window.The teacher interrupts him, "David, what are you doing?""I'm thinking, sir""Well stop it and get on with your work!"

It wasn't me, but it could have been. And it sums up pretty well what I think about school, and how it felt for me. The awful tedium, the long hours dragging by, the desire to be 'somewhere else', the feeling of all that lost time, the absence of any encouragement to be creative, different or myself.

Finding out who I really am, what I want, and what I think, and daring to 'become myself' is a life-long challenge for all of us.

In the gardens of the castle just in front of our regular play area, they are performing major transformations for this weekend's flower festival - including flooding the gardens to make a pseudo-moat.

There are now two little incisors poking through at the bottom, but it's not finished apparently. Difficult to avoid overdosing with Calpol when it's early-o'clock in the morning.

Unbroken nights, and uninterrupted meals, are a distant memory...

But when she's not wailing, she's very cute, always trying to catch our eyes (can you say that in English?), does lots of gurgles and smiles for me when I get home. Wants to be up and looking at whatever's going on - definitely not lying down!

I don't know where Kalia had time to observe people playing football, but recently we had to dig out a ball, gloves and a hat so that she good play football in her bedroom. It's both wonderful and scary to see the imaginative ideas she has, and the connections she draws between different things she learns and sees.

Why scary? Because often I only 'twig' at the last minute what she's trying to do or communicate. Which suggests that often I'm not understand her at all, and I get cross because I can't understand why she's being so 'slow', or 'difficult', or pulling me in another direction than the one I intended.

A typical example - the other day we were coming home 'the back way' through the garden, and she'd picked a daisy. She picked another one and gave it to me, and I had to hold it in my right hand, and then we were supposed to walk round in circles holding the daisies. I was just about reaching 'shirty', when she said "Aha! Daddy". I was immediately enlightened and a relief of understanding infused my brain, along with thankfullness that I do watch her videos with her sometimes.

For those of you uncultivated persons who don't know the entire back catalog of Winnie the Pooh cartoons by heart, this is from a scene where Tigger, Piglet and Pooh, under the direction of Rabbit, are rehearsing their plan to oust Kanga from the Hundred Acre Wood. Trivial? Maybe. Childish? Of course. Unimportant? Not at all. If I'd squashed that squib too, what message does it send to my daughter?

Anonymous left a comment on my post about heads rolling the other day. I thought it was probably worth making a post out of. And my brother pushed me in the right direction by asking for me to translate it... (I suspect anonymous may be an English speaker and live in the US, given that there are several links in English, and that he/she knows who Ron Paul is. That and the fact that the French don't do irony that much - but then again Americans aren't said to either.)

Yeah, well obviously it's the neo-liberal market which created laws like the CRA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act) which incited millions of households to get into debt. And it is also 'laissez-faire' which gave birth to state-sponsored companies (Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac) which were supposed to ensure all these doubtful lones, come what may. And let's not forget that the US central bank which manipulates interest rates and thus creates housing bubbles - amongst others - is a purely liberal invention… (http://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1847/00/kmfe18470000b.htm -> 5. Centralisation of credit by the state, by means of a central bank, who's capital will belong to the state, and who will have an exclusive monopoly).

Some light reading for this weekend, and just maybe some of your presuppositions might be changed.

Kind regards.

My answer in the following comment translates to:

It's true that I'm not an expert, but I'm not sure that it is the dodgy lending in the US which are the cause of the current crisis. If I understand correctly, it is the 'derivatives' and speculation based on those mortgages which spread the rot....

I read somewhere that Warren Buffet has been warning about this problem for several years ... does he count as an expert, at least?

If it's too good to be true, it surely isn't. But greed and crowd-thinking make people tend to believe that the disaster is for 'later', and that 10% profit with zero risk is realistic.

My problem with neo-liberal theories is that too often it is only the bits that benefit the rich that get put into practice.

We're supposed to be against protectionism: So let's break down all those protective barriers in third-world countries, and go and buy up all their public services. But you'd better not lay a finger on the cotton-growing lobby in the US!Free movement in a free market? Yep, for money and arms, but not for people - not poor people anyway.

What makes me mad is that since we have killed off God, morality and ethics, the only value which is still accepted in public discourse is the value of money, and the ethics of economics first.

//I had a colleague who said that the best thing for road safety would be to have a 10-inch spike sticking out of all steering wheels...

(If I had the time, I'd create another blog about the weirdness of traffic signposting here in Switzerland. There really would be enough for a whole blog!)

People who met me briefly at university would be amazed to read this stuff on my blog. I used to hold out about how Christians shouldn't get involved in politics. I guess that was in the time before I learnt to think for myself!

I actually don't really care for politics or money. But I do care about people, and justice. And unfortunately you can't care about people and justice without paying some attention to politics and money.

(I suspect that in two years time she won't accept this as proof that she does like carrots).

So here we are - the markets bounce back after soothing announcements. The world's governments sweep all the problems under the carpet. A rather expensive carpet.

I don't have much faith in these rescue plans, to be honest. Money makes your head go funny, apparently, but I think we should take a leaf out of our grandparent's book:

"There's no such thing as a free lunch" - So those thousands of billions which magically appear out of our governments pockets (despite the fact that they were already in the red) - beware! It looks very much like exactly the same kind of financial smokes and mirrors which got us here in the first place. Pouf! And a rabbit comes out of the hat. Watch carefully, because it could just as easily disappear.

"Making do" - let's stop that compulsive buying, or retail therapy. It can also be rewarding to prove to ourselves that we can make do without, that we are able to wait, that we can cope! Relationships are the most rewarding thing in life, and they don't (need to) cost any money.

"Nothing goes to waste" - recycling is good, re-using is better.

"You scratch my back" - helping each other out - I fix your computer, you fix my hair. Sharing our stuff to. Lending rarely used appliances instead of everyone buying their own. It goes against the grain of our individualistic habits. Don't wait till you're hungry to discover that no man is an island.

"You can fix it" - We've become accustomed to a topsy-turvy world where it's cheaper to buy something new than repair something old (where 'old' can mean just months). We need to change that habit too.

That's my tuppence worth. Don't count on the bankers and politicians getting us out of this mess, they're up to their necks in it and haven't a clue, I suspect.

An old lady being interviewed on the radio about her husband's recent demise:

"So, Mrs Smith, can you tell us exactly what happened?""Well, I was getting the dinner ready, so Harry went down the garden to get some green beans""And...?""Well, he dropped dead, right there in the garden, from a heart attack.""So what did you do?""I opened a can of peas"---This was (I believe), my maternal grandmother's favourite joke. She had a rough life, but she did know how to have a good giggle!

Apparently, my grandfather didn't see what was funny (maybe he took it personnaly?).

But he was a strange chap. We were to call him 'Pater' and not 'Granddad'. Ostensibly because he didn't want to feel old.In hindsight, I suspect it was to maintain some kind of distance (which could be felt in other ways). Dunno why.

Life is full of these nobbly bits, unanswered questions, weird situations, strange memories which we'll never really understand.